Kelly ‘12
Purpose, Audience and Genre
Read the following excerpt from a New York Times article titled “Behind the Google
Goggles, Virtual Reality” (February 22, 2012).
SAN FRANCISCO — It wasn’t so long ago that legions of people began walking the
streets, talking to themselves.
On closer inspection, many of them turned out to be wearing tiny earpieces that connected
wirelessly to their smartphones.
What’s next? Perhaps throngs of people in thick-framed sunglasses lurching down the
streets, cocking and twisting their heads like extras in a zombie movie.
That’s because later this year, Google is expected to start selling eyeglasses that will
project information, entertainment and, this being a Google product, advertisements onto
the lenses. The glasses are not being designed to be worn constantly — although Google
engineers expect some users will wear them a lot — but will be more like smartphones,
used when needed, with the lenses serving as a kind of see-through computer monitor.
“It will look very strange to onlookers when people are wearing these glasses,” said
William Brinkman, graduate director of the computer science and software engineering
department at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. “You obviously won’t see what they can
from the behind the glasses. As a result, you will see bizarre body language as people
duck or dodge around virtual things.”
How is this typical of what you would expect to find in a conventional newspaper
article?
In what ways is this different from a conventional newspaper article?
Matrix for Google Glasses Articles
In the matrix below, note the periodical in which you think each article was published.
In the “evidence” column, indicate what makes you think so.
For fun, you might also try to match the titles with the articles.
Periodicals
Forbes
Girls Life
PC World
Social Media Today
USA Today
Yale Daily News
Article
Article Titles
“Are Google-Powered Glasses the Next Techie Trend?”(1)
“Google Glasses are a Prescription for Disaster”(2)
“Google Glasses Give Us a Glimpse of the Future”(3)
“How Google Glasses Could Revolutionize Virtual Advertising”(4)
“Report: Google Working on Smart Glasses”(5)
“Will Google’s Glasses Take “Social” Media Too Far?”(6)
Periodical
Evidence
Title
Article #1
Article #2
Article #3
Article #4
Article #5
Article #6
Modified from Jendian/ERWC